STEPS
INGREDIENTS
This recipe can be broken down into two parts, making the pad thai sauce and actually cooking the pad thai. Let's do the sauce first, but in the meantime..
..soak the noodles in warm water for about 20-30min. You can use whatever size you like, wider or narrower, completely up to your preferences.
These are the ingredients for the sauce. You can start with the doses: 1-1.5 Tbsp of tamarind paste, 3 Tbsp of fish sauce, 1 Tbsp of soy sauce, 3-4 Tbsp palm sugar, 1tsp of chili paste.
Combine in a cup. This is the sauce at the beginning, start stirring to dissolve sugar and tamarind paste, if you struggle you might heat it gently 30-60s in the microwave to help dissolve the sugar.
Taste try the sauce, it should taste sweet first, followed by spicy-salty and sour last. Add more sugar to contrast the sourness of the tamarind. It will taste much stronger than it will be at the end
Before actually cooking the pad thai, you will need to prep all the ingredients. Start from the peanuts, place them in a baking tray with some veg oil and roast them in the oven grill.
When roasted let them dry on a paper towel on a plate.
Chop some tofu into cubes and put it in a pan with a bit of sunflower seeds oil.
Stir fry until you start roasting it
Add a splash of soy sauce and sauté the tofu, don't let it burn, then set aside
Clean the shrimps. I like to leave the tails on just for decoration
Take the scallions and chop the white bottoms finely, while leaving longer pieces on the top greener parts. Crush the garlic cloves.
Chop the parsley. Make some curls out of the carrot using a cheese grater and the potato peeler. Chop the peanuts.
Now you have all the ingredients ready, including the eggs, drained noodles and a cup of water, make sure you keep everything well within reach. Time to cook.
Heat some oil in a large saucepan or even a wok.
Throw in the garlic and the bottoms of the scallions. Stir fry without burning.
Add the drained noodles.
Add a splash of water
Add two tablespoons of the sauce. Stir fry the noodles, they should soften and become sticky while keeping a firm "al dente" texture
Push the noodles to one side and push the pan slightly off from the heat. Heat some more oil.
Throw in the shrimps
When the shrimps are fried evenly on all sides add the tofu and stir fry together briefly.
Set tofu and shrimps aside.
Lower the heat and crack the two eggs.
Scramble them quickly, then when cooked mix everything together and sauté.
Add the rest of the sauce and keep sautéing
Add the green parts of the scallions too.
Sauté quickly distributing the sauce evenly, at this point it should start thickening and becoming fairly sticky.
Add the parsley in. If you like bean sprouts and want them you should add them at this stage.
Add also 2/3 of the peanuts
Sauté and stir fry the whole mix until you get an even distribution of the mix. If you want you can add some more oil. Do not over dry the sauce.
Plate the pad thai and garnish with the remaining peanuts, the carrots and the wedge of lime.
Enjoy!
- 200.0g Flat rice noodles
- 12.0g Jumbo Shrimps (Prawns)
- 1/2bnch Scallion
- 2.0bnch Garlic cloves
- Firm tofu
- 2.0bnch Eggs
- Parsley
- Bean sprouts (missing here)
- Unsalted Peanuts
- Fish sauce
- Tamarind paste
- Palm sugar
- Soy sauce
- 1.0 Carrot
- Sunflower seeds oil
- Pepper
- Chili sauce
Gioele Nunziatini
Italian born and raised, I moved abroad to pursue a career in engineering. Cooking is what brings me back to my origins, to the flavors of my parents' farm.
London, UK
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